to the first reads of the morning. you may be breaking off to hear from president obama at the prayer breakfast. let's start with the first read. after years of secrecy, president obama ordered the justice department to release a classified memo detailing the legal justification for killing americans considered terrorists to two congressional committees. they will do so on a classified basis. the disclosure to congress happened on the eve of this afternoon's confirmation hearing for john brennan, the president's choice to be the next director of the cia. press secretary jay carney refused to acknowledge that the memo existed. he prepared for the senate intelligence and he refused to commit saying any decision would require interagent consultation. after nbc commented on the white paper that summarized the legal arguments and hoping to nip any congressional sustained criticism in the bud and delay brennan's confirmation, the president made the decision to have it be shown to members of the congress. he called the senator who has a one-man oversight, biden threatened to pull out the stops to get

raise the limit only accompanied by equal spending cuts. after agreeing to the cuts, the obama white house can't agree on how to reduce the deficit to raise the debt limit by that much. that's why they came up with the sequester idea. at the root was a fundamental miscalculation. the miscalculation that both sides at the time believe was that there was a majority of republican who is were not going to let the defense cuts hit because that was the one piece of spending that they were for and politically could sell and defend. that turned out to be incorrect. after the election when negotiations over the debt ceiling were happening, the president won and lost the incentive on republican terms. the white house made an incorrect assumption that republicans would save and negotiated a limited deal with the expiring tax cuts. lending the sequester and increasing the debt ceiling later. again, it was a miscalculation. the escape act that saved the day during the fiscal cliff fight is not there right now. here's why. one of the congressional bodies that democrats control, republicans cannot

. president obama's state of the union address is just a week from today and the president is flooding the zone. worried the federal budget could dominate and limit his agenda this year. he's pushing other issues. he's talking guns one day, immigration the next. making sure he's not drawn into a standoff with republicans over the economy which would quickly come to define his second term. today, he makes the case on immigration to business leaders, including ceos like steve case and monica lozano from his now disbanded jobs council and chief executives of coca-cola and yahoo!. he also meets with labor and progressive leaders. the meetings will focus on how immigration reform fits into his broader economic agenda. >>> homeland security secretary janet napolitano on monday brought that message to border security operations near san diego. >> our immigration system has been broken for far too long. time to fix it has come. time is of the essence. i believe the border is secure. i believe the border is a safe border. that's not to say that everything is 100%. >> today napolitano will visit

Excerpts 0 to 3 of about 4 results.